Monthly Archives: December 2008

Since Schnookie is very much the cook in our family, when recipes get shared they’re usually shared with her. But every once in a while, a recipe is passed along to Maple Hoo with the intention of me trying it out. Such was the scene last month when Sue from Liv ‘n Laf emailed me with several delicious spritz cookie recipes! Woo-hoo! My intention had been to try all three recipes out this Christmas season but then one thing led to another (i.e. I was lazy, everyone got cookie-ed out, and I got sucked into a new craft [more about that soon]) and in the end I can only report on one of them. But that one? Was awesome! (Well, sort of.)

One of the three recipes Sue sent was for “Christmas Trees”, almond-flavored spritz cookies using the tree shapes. What drew me in was the addition of green food coloring. How is one supposed to resist?!

Sue’s recipe was fabulous, and having had a bit of practice with the cookie press, I knew exactly how to attack the problem of pressing the cookies onto trays. Into the oven they went, and out of the oven they came perfectly baked and delicious. (Well, sort of.)

The other day, Patty (in Dallas) complained in an email sent about recipe sharing, about when you give someone a recipe and then they go and change out ingredients and then complain that it didn’t taste good. I was like, “Yeah, that’s awful! Who would do that?!” Uh… Turns out, I would. You see, for some reason, I considered green Christmas cookies and thought, “They should be mint flavored!” So instead of using the almond extract that Sue’s recipe called for, I substituted some peppermint extract.

You know what shouldn’t go in these cookies? Peppermint extract. Boomer and I both agreed they were edible but Schnookie declared them to be like eating toothpaste and wouldn’t go near them. Obviously, the almond extract was the way to go. Oops. Serves me right for substituting ingredients in a recipe that was sent to me! Next time, I will not be straying from the printed recipe, I promise! Sorry, Sue! (The dough, other than the wrong flavoring, was perfect. So I know this recipe, when done correctly, will be a keeper! Thanks for sending it along, and I promise not to screw up the others when I try them!)

Sue gave me permission to write up all three recipes here, so go forth and press cookies, Gentle Reader! And remember — follow the instructions! Or at the very least, don’t use peppermint!

Christmas day at Maple Hoo is all about taking it easy, kicking back, and hanging out in our pajamas while we enjoy good company and play with all our new toys. (That’s the spirit of Christmas, right? Playing with new toys?) This year we didn’t even bother with a fancy dinner, because that would mean Schnookie would have to spend all day in the kitchen while Pookie and Boomer played with the new Wii game (De Blob is awesome, in case you’re wondering). No, that just would not do. So instead, we took a suggestion from Kristin and had easy, munchie snack food to nibble on all day.

The day started with mimosas and cranberry-vanilla coffee cake. Then we graduated to champagne-and-Grand-Marnier cocktails to go with our high-end pigs in blankets (the “high-end” part being that we used nice breakfast sausages from Whole Foods instead of hot dogs. Yeah, we were living large) and mac & cheese bites (baked in mini muffin pans). Then, during the second half of our bad Bond movie marathon (we watched Moonraker on Christmas Eve and Octopussy on Christmas), we enjoyed a warm leek and goat cheese dip with crusty bread and crackers (there was talk of making crackers ourselves, but that petered out), and then we chased everything with peppermint hot chocolate. It may not have been the peak of gourmet, but it was sure delicious and fun. All in, it was a perfect holiday!

No, we’re not very religious here at Maple Hoo, but we do have at least a little Christ in our Christmas.

When we were kids we had two creches that were the funnest part of putting out all our decorations on Christmas Eve. It was like playing with a dollhouse, arranging all the little figures around their respective mangers.

Now, one of the creches was a gift from friends of our father’s family; they were the kind of people who collect creches from all over the world, and gave us one from some Polynesian locale. It was made of bamboo. It did not artfully survive being manhandled by four children, and is in no shape to be put out every Christmas.

Our other creche was from Boomer’s family, and is adorably like a 3-D version of the illustrations in a children’s Bible.

This creche is also in bad shape, with every figure spiderwebbed with repair lines from where they have been dropped and broken, but it’s at least not just a heap of unrecognizable pieces of bamboo. Also, the packaging we keep it in is pretty remarkable. First, there’s the newspaper the individual pieces are wrapped in for storage:

Yup. That’s the New York Times from Thursday, January 5, 1989.

And then there’s the tattered old box everything gets put in for its 11-month stay in the attic:

Last year Favre discovered he could just wedge himself into the box, and slept in it all December. One evening, while laughing at the big, fluffy cat curled up in the little, beat-up box, Boomer exclaimed with no small surprise, “That’s my father’s handwriting!” Her father passed away when she was 16. The box, clearly marked “CRESHE”, is dated December 1962. We might not spend our holidays in person with our extended family, but they’re certainly here in spirit.

Ahh, Bucilla. The cornerstone of all our Christmas aesthetic. Where would we be without their felt-and-sequin ornaments? All of our childhood memories of decorating Christmas trees revolve around hanging up the ones that Boomer stitched either before we were born or while we were still young. Our memories of our tween years’ Christmases revolve around raiding the boxes of old Bucilla kits stockpiled in the attic and following in Boomer’s footsteps to make our own ornaments. I don’t even have the words to describe the swirl of happy nostalgia that comes with running my fingers over the little glass beads that hold the sequins in place, or the way colored Christmas lights reflect off the metallic sequins with their overlaying beads, or thinking about carefully following the lines printed on the felt as I stabbed through with those sharp, sharp needles as I sat cross-legged on the shag carpet in my 12-year-old self’s bedroom while making the ornaments in July. Nope, Bucilla ornaments are where it starts and ends for us. They are the alpha and omega of a Maple Hoo Christmas.

They still make Bucilla ornament kits, of course, but they’re not old school. They beads are color-coordinated to the sequins, instead of all of them being either clear or black. The designs are less theme-y, and are instead things like Christmas mice, or elves, or — heaven forbid — licensed Mikey Mouses. *Shudder* No, the Bucilla we believe in is all about a story set, like this Tin Woodsman who goes with a Wizard of Oz theme, or the Little Red Riding Hood and Big Bad Wolf that the two of us stitched ourselves. Most of the ornaments we have left are missing their compatriots, or maybe never had them, but isn’t that the way a Christmas tree is supposed to be? Covered with figures that make up just about a quarter of what should have been a matching set?

Of course, not all of them are well-known characters. One orphaned ornament that’s been around as long as we have is this reindeer:

As long as he’s smiling at us with that jaunty green bow and not a single other member of his team in sight, we know it’s truly Maple Hoo Christmas.

Our Christmas traditions have been through a lot of reinventions since our father died 15 years ago. For a few years we didn’t do anything, then we spent a few years trying to make our trees as fancy as possible, in response to our entirely-too-handmade-and/or-threadbare childhood ornaments, and then we swung back into heavy nostalgia for the tattered favorites of our youth. Now we think we’ve struck a pretty good balance. Our ornament collection (which is a lot vaster than what got hung up this year) runs the gamut from the ’70s-tacular and pretty well battered…

It’s a gingham gingerbread house made of out cloth-covered styrofoam and yarn, of course. And no, it wasn’t made by one of us. This bad boy was purchased. Nice work, Boomer and Dad!

…to the very, very pretty and modern-day.

After decades of providing all the felt-and-sequin ornaments a tree could ever hope for, Boomer has settled on this decidedly not handmade one as her favorite. Can you blame her?

No, we’re never going to be invited to put Maple Hoo on some themed-Christmas house tour, but that’s okay with us.

We’re getting closer! It’s almost time to open the stack of loot! But “almost” isn’t close enough, so we still have to bide our time basking in the glory of the tree, and wishing for a white Christmas. Sure, most of our friends on the interwebs are reporting all kinds of big snow events, but the best we’ve got is this: